writing of "The Fortune of the Rougons." It was only in the following
year, however, that the serial publication of the work commenced in
the columns of "Le Siecle," the Republican journal of most influence
in Paris in those days of the Second Empire. The Franco-German war
interrupted this issue of the story, and publication in book form did
not take place until the latter half of 1871, a time when both the war
and the Commune had left Paris exhausted, supine, with little or no
interest in anything. No more unfavourable moment for the issue of an
ambitious work of fiction could have been found. Some two or three
years went by, as I well remember, before anything like a revival of
literature and of public interest in literature took place. Thus, M.
Zola launched his gigantic scheme under auspices which would have made
many another man recoil. "The Fortune of the Rougons," and two or three
subsequent volumes of his series, attracted but a moderate degree
of attention, and it was only on the morrow of the publication of
"L'Assommoir" that he awoke, like Byron, to find himself famous.

As previously mentioned, the Rougon-Macquart series forms twenty
volumes. The last of these, "Dr. Pascal," appeared in 1893. Since
then M. Zola has written "Lourdes," "Rome," and "Paris." Critics have
repeated _ad nauseam_ that these last works constitute a new departure
on M. Zola's part, and, so far as they formed a new series, this
is true. But the suggestion that he has in any way repented of the
Rougon-Macquart novels is ridiculous. As he has often told me of recent
years, it is, as far as possible, his plan to subordinate his style and
methods to his subject. To have written a book like "Rome," so largely
devoted to the ambitions of the Papal See, in the same way as he had
written books dealing with the drunkenness or other vices of Paris,
would have been the climax of absurdity.